Rencontres franco-américaines: French-American Contrasts With Mini-Dramas and Exercises
Synopsis "Rencontres franco-américaines: French-American Contrasts With Mini-Dramas and Exercises"
Rencontres franco-américaines is a French textbook composed of all new cross-cultural mini-dramas, plus many short internet documents which penetrate deeper and more extensively into France and the French way-of-life. Most second and third year French books devote very little attention to important issues which both France and America are dealing with, each in its own way. Consequently, Americans meeting French people often do not understand how the French are dealing with many of the issues we both find extremely important in living our lives. The way the French deal with inequality in income, the minimum wage, universal access to health care, schools that provide a work force of varied skills, as well as higher education and research institutions on the cutting edge of science. How access to sports, teams and physical fitness are open to all, and appreciated by many, and at the same time sports have a different degree of integration into educational institutions than in our country. Countries can learn from each other in many ways, including the handling of controversial issues, such as how to screen and evaluate who runs for higher office in order to assure that those who are chosen have experience, integrity and all those qualities we expect in our leaders. European newspapers and other media report on many happenings in the United States, considerably more than the American media reports on the Europeans. Consequently the Europeans generally have a better understanding of who we are than we have of them. This French textbook provides students with considerably more information about France and the French than they could get from any other source. And at the same time, the students are learning the French vocabulary and the ability to talk about these important issues with French people, as well as with those foreigners who are more confident speaking French rather than English. Studying a particular language, the people who speak it and the country in which they live is a rewarding and profitable experience as it opens one's ability to communicate with a much larger number of people in the world, but also gaining a deeper understanding of how countries differ with each other in how people live, their different values, different degrees of warmth and acceptance of each other, etc. After reading this book, or at the end of the course which uses this book, you will in a real sense have a different view of the French, the Americans, and by extension, those of other countries of the world.
